


until there's nothing left of me

by peppermintflower (dragonet)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Confusion, Destroying the American Flag, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hand Jobs, If That Kind of Thing Bothers You, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lonely Derek, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Sick Derek, Smut, Tattooed Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 08:31:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3440495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonet/pseuds/peppermintflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I give it all, and when I fall, I get up and give some more</p>
            </blockquote>





	until there's nothing left of me

**Author's Note:**

> AN: I don't even. I don't even know. I have absolutely no idea. I'm so sorry.
> 
> Place your confusion in the comments box. I have no excuse.

 

His eyelashes are like feathers, trembling spans of thickest darkness and in the dim sodium glow it’s just possible to see the canvas of his skin and all the latitudes and longitudes of where he’s been and who he’s seen; the big black ‘S’ carved into one shoulder stands for so many things, _Stiles_ and _Scott_ and _Stupid._

_Stupid, stupid, stupid,_ Derek says to himself and imagines a shooting star so he can wish to go back, before everything was a mess.

 

He has dreams of cornfields stretching out to the sky, of endless roads delineated only by double lines and the glow of a full moon, of gallows silhouetted against a red dawn and of shattered glass, all overlaid with the screaming harshness of crow’s chatter.

He does not often now dream of anything else.

 

Derek’s house is full of all these fragment dreams; a lonely building on a road where miles disintegrate into heat-shimmer and the blue sky is the shell of God’s cupped hand.

When the corn-gold is too much to bear against the red dirt and cerulean sun, the gray siding and shingles taste like the relief of rain. Derek spends most time in the hay barn, lying on the roof of the Camaro and gazing at the sun moving slowly through the pinprick holes. Every so often Stiles of three years ago appears, slouched on the hood with one leg bent, and says, _Dude, you’re killing me._

The house came fully furnished with a yellowing willow tea-set on the dresser and pictures of four uniformed boys on the mantelpiece, and Derek found a slashed-up Stars and Stripes under the sink reeking of blood and sorrow. It feels sacrilegious to move anything, like the past owner will come back at any time to claim what’s hers. But she’s dead along with her family and Derek _still_ can’t bring himself even to eat at the table.

 

Stiles had no such scruples and in his narrow room the walls and ceiling beam back Scott’s smile, the side of Erica’s head, Boyd’s eyes, Isaac’s hands. There are random shots of old-style diners, knickerbocker glories with cherries on top and Kira in a pair of high-waisted jeans. Lydia laughs, poised on a frozen lake while Allison wobbles next to her. In several Derek himself features neither smiling nor frowning, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, and these are placed dead-centre – over the dusty computer and stripped bed. Derek doesn’t go in there.

Outside the window thirty crows cackle in the leafless oak tree.

 

Isaac’s bed is made with military precision and a square-edge. There is nothing left of him, not even the scent of his laundry powder. The bottom left pane is cracked and a shard of glass swoons on his pillow. Derek sees the pink sunrise through there, sometimes.

 

The jacket in the downstairs closet still smells like Boyd.

 

Scott never lived here but one of his sneakers is still lying on the outhouse roof.

 

Jackson bled on the porch and left a stain the shape of Texas.

 

The key bowl by the door is full of Erica’s rings.

 

Derek’s midnight haunt is the all night 7-Eleven fifteen miles down the road. He likes the surreal fluorescent lighting after the road whipping by in serene darkness.

The kid on the tills on Wednesday nights is painful to look at because his wide eyes are everything Derek misses and the flick of his wrist scanning items is as familiar as heartache.

 

Sometimes snow falls on New York and Derek watches it silently in the TV above the bar, wonders what would be different if he’d stayed. Occasionally when he’s curled in the backseat of the Camaro, skewed in the parking lot, he dreams about frost and his breath in the silver air.

 

Because what, when all is said and done, is real? He doesn’t know any more. Stiles lounges on the hood of the car, Erica jumps lightly from the hay loft, Jackson sprints alongside when he’s pushing a ton, laughs and tells him to put his foot down, not to be a grandpa.

Sometimes Derek forgets himself and replies.

 

_Come back to me,_ Stiles says, standing outside in a heat-haze, wavering like a column of fire. He’s wearing Derek’s leather jacket. _Derek, come back._

Derek just laughs from the roof and tells Stiles he knows all his secrets.

He thought he’d forgotten the crease of Stiles’s frown.

_Come down._

 

_I don’t trust you,_ he whispers to the kitchen tiles and Stiles sighs, bathed in the light of a day years gone.

 

A baby blue Jeep is parked at the 7-Eleven but the licence plate is wrong.

 

_You’ve been alone too long,_ Stiles tells him. _You’re a pack animal, Derek. You can’t do this to yourself._

Derek asks why he cares but by the time he’s raised his head from the table Stiles has evaporated.

 

Derek’s jacket didn’t fit Stiles three years ago.

 

Next time Stiles appears Derek reaches for him, but it’s all wrong, and his hands won’t grasp no matter how he tries, and then he realises he’s dreaming anyway and wakes up.

 

Stiles puts a paper bag on the table and says, _I came to say goodbye_.

_What’s the bag?_ Derek mumbles. The floor is his new place.

Stiles glances, like he’d forgotten it, an old Stilinski tactic.

_Come here._

Stiles hesitates.

_Please._

His hands are scorching under Derek’s fingers and he’s distracted by the tattoos, _Jail Bait_ , across his knuckles. Derek called him that, a cold winter four or five or six years ago, a joke and a shove into the lacy California snow.

 

Stiles’s lips are a brand on him hotter than the sun. Derek longed for this years ago, when the world was different and he was someone worse than he knows.

He thinks he tells Stiles, _I wanted you,_ but he could be wrong.

_Fuck,_ Stiles breathes into Derek’s mouth, slick hands between them so good, so warm. _You’re – Derek. Derek._

Derek bites his neck, delights in the feeling of flesh between his teeth, loves the breathless noise it brings from Stiles, hips all ragged with ink and need.

He thinks he says, _don’t go._

_I’m not letting you go. Not this time._

Words written on Derek’s lower lip.

 

He’s always been there. Holding Derek up in swimming pools, long fingers around his wrists, light catching the side of his face and the unguarded treasure of his eyes. All this time and everything lived in Derek’s heart unknown unseen unguessed.

 

He hears his own voice clearly for the first time when he says,

_I love you._

Stiles stutters on a moan and stuffs his knuckles in his mouth, the ones reading _Bait_ and Derek says it out loud, laughs because he can.

_Jail Bait._

_Your face,_ Stiles gasps. His spine twitches helplessly under Derek’s light touch, sweat beading everywhere and the world is treacle-thick and lovely.

_Come for me,_ Derek says to Stiles’s jawline. _I want to feel you come._

Stiles does so because he’s never been able to resist.

 

_Come back to me_ , Stiles murmurs and Derek is clutching him, sobbing into the join of neck and shoulder, Stiles’s body so alive and firm and real, he’s really here, he’s here, Stiles is here.

_Always you, I promise, it’s always been you._

Derek thinks he said it but he could be wrong.

 

What is real? Derek keeps time by ripping fragments from the Stars and Stripes, knows each day is real by counting missing patriotism. When he dreams, the tree is the gallows and voodoo dolls dance on the ribbons of flag.

 

Where does Stiles go when Derek can’t see him? Mystery sits under his tongue like a boiled sweet.

 

In the high summer heat, Derek spreads himself in the leafless shade allowed by the tree, watches the dolls swing above his head and knows they are all dead, all dead, all dead.

 

Scott says, _Dude, you do_ not _look very well._ His face looms in Derek’s vision.

_Tell me about it,_ Stiles replies.

 

Derek knows everything that’s real or not; if it is real, it’s real, and if it is not, it’s not.

 

It rains briefly, mid-afternoon. Derek stands with his head back and mouth open, feels the land drinking in every drop, feels the parched grass where he’s sheltering it, so he goes and lies on the roof and watches a storm born before his nose.

 

When did he sleep? Days and weeks and months blend together and each night is the same as the day and Derek doesn’t know what is real. Underneath God’s hand everything crumbles.

 

_Prove it,_ Derek says from the oak tree, faded scraps of the American flag brushing his face. The road ripples long in the flickering midday.

Stiles holds up his fists, _Jail Bait_.

_Come back,_ he says. _Derek, come back to me._

 

The voodoo dolls whisper at night, all dead, all dead, all dead.

 

He didn’t lock the door. He imagines the house behind him, sitting silent in the summer’s end. Heat rising from the warped floorboards and corrupting everything, the yellow tea-set, the musty sheets on Isaac’s bed, Boyd’s jacket, Scott’s sneaker, Jackson’s blood eaten away by time. White wind lashes through the open windows of the Camaro. Derek laughs.

North, North, North, and the road sings to him beneath his wheels. To the horizon and over the edge again and again, until he finds some sanity.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Give It All' by The Amity Affliction, highly recommended.


End file.
